Super AMOLED: introduction and market status - Page 1

Article last updated on: Aug 11, 2019

OLED displays use organic materials that emit light when electricity is applied. OLEDs enable emissive, bright, thin, flexible and efficient displays. OLEDs are set to replace LCDs in all display applications - from small displays to large TV sets.

Samsung's Super-AMOLED displays, announced in January 2010, are AMOLED displays for mobile devices (such as smartphones, wearables and tablets) with an integrated touch function. The thickness of the touch sensor is just 0.001 mm and this allows the screen to provide better images and to have great visibility even in direct sunlight compared with regular AMOLED displays with an external touch layer.

Super AMOLED and the PenTile matrix

Samsung's Super-AMOLED displays use a Pentile matrix sub-pixel design. That means that the green sub-pixel is shared by two pixels and the display has only 2 sub-pixels per real 'pixel' compared to the classic RGB matrix design (or Real-Stripe). You can see a PenTile matrix vs a Real-Stripe one on the images below (the PenTile is on the right). Newer Super AMOLED displays use a different PenTile matrix (Diamond Pixel pattern).

Display measurement experts from DisplayMate already tested the new display (with a pre-production GS9), and published a comprehensive report. As expected, Samsung continues to improve its OLED displays, and the GS9 again is announced by DisplayMate to be the world's best ever mobile display, better than the iPhone X OLED.

Yesterday Apple announced its new iPhone lineup which includes the flagship iPhone X that, as expected, features a 5.8" 1125x2436 (458 PPI) flexible Super AMOLED display that covers almost the entire front of the phone. Apple's first OLED iPhone will ship in November starting at $999.

Android Authority performed some preliminary tests of LG V30's display, which uses LGD's flexible P-OLED panels. AA says that the first impressions are very positive, and LGD's mobile OLEDs are highly competitive with Samsung's latest Super AMOLED displays (AA compared the V30 to the Galaxy S8, although to be fair SDC has since improved its OLEDs).

LG's color temperature is quite higher compared to the OLED of the GS8 - 8500K vs the GS8 7500K. On manual brightness both phones are able to reach almost the same brightness (421 nits on the V30, 398 nits on the GS8), while on automotive mode the LG reaches 606 nits and the GS8 only 535 nits (DisplayMate says the GS8 should reach 1,020 nits - but AA could not reach this high brightness in these tests). AA reviewers say that the LG V30 is quite comparable to Samsung's display in terms of black levels and vibrant colors.

DisplayMate says that the new OLED display has several improvements compared to the previous generation display, and Samsung also included several new display features and functions in the phone. The major improvement is that the Note 8 is 22% brighter compared to the GS8 - it reaches a peak brightness of 1,200 nits - the brightest mobile phone ever.

According to the Korea Herald, Samsung decided to "play it safe" with its next year's flagship phone and it will adopt the same basic design as in its current Galaxy S8. The 2018 Galaxy S9 will use a 5.8" Infinity curved Super AMOLED display (and the S9+ will use a 6.2" display as used in the S8+).

Samsung started shipping its Galaxy Book 12" - for $1,125 (4GB RAM, 128GB storage) or $1,325 (8GB RAM, 256GB storage). The Galaxy Book 12" is a Windows 10 professional tablet that features a 12" 2160x1440 Super AMOLED display, an intel i5 CPU, 4/8GB of RAM and 128/256 GB of storage.

Samsung's latest flagship phones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are not shipping yet, but according to reports that early reaction from retailers suggest that the larger S8+ variant is more popular than expected.

Samsung first aimed to produce 50% more Galaxy S8 variants than Galaxy S8+, but have decided now to increase the ratio of S8+ devices to 45%. The new phones will start shipping globally on April 21th.

Samsung announces its latest flagship phones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Both phones sport what Samsung brands as an Infinity Display - a curved flexible Super AMOLED that is almost without any bezels. Samsung did not release an edition with a non-flexible rigid OLED, but this isn't really a surprise.

The Galaxy S8 has a 5.8" Quad HD+ (2960x1440, 570PPI) OLED while the S8+ has a larger version (6.2") but with the same resolution (529 PPI). Both phones feature a 10nm Octa-core 64bit CPU, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, microSD slot, IP68 water and dust resistance, Android 7.0, Samsung Bixby assistant and a Dual-Pixel 12MP OIS camera. Both phones will launch globally on April 21st 2017.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab S3 is now shipping in the US for $699 (Wi-Fi edition). This gaming and entertainment optimized Android V7 tablet features a 9.7" QXGA (2048x1536) Super AMOLED display, a quad-core Snapdragon 820 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, microSD slot and quad-stereo speakers.

According to report from Korea, Samsung Electronics has decided to start adopting OLED displays in all of its tablet devices and to increasingly use OLEDs in laptops. The Galaxy Tab S3 is the company's latest OLED tablet.

Last week Samsung released several videos that showcase its latest Super AMOLED displays. The videos shows what looks to be an actual upcoming phone with almost no bezels on the sides and no physical buttons on the front:

This design has been suggested (leaked?) before for Samsung's upcoming flagship, the Galaxy S8. Samsung is expected to reveal the S8 soon, at the MWC 2017 event (February 27th). Of course this could just be a concept handset created for the AMOLED video, but it could also be Samsung's actual new phone that was added to the video by mistake (or not by mistake).